PCLinuxOS Software From Yesteryear, NovelWriter, Puddletag, and Thorium Reader
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Grab Your Favorite Software From Yesteryear
Most Linux users (PCLinuxOS users included) got their start with computers using a commercially available OS. Exceptionally few actually started with Linux.
Along the way, we all encountered software that we came to love. Much of that software was designed to run on Microsoft Windows, the commercially available OS that held/holds the lion's share of the OS market.
However, as I'm sure we're all aware, Linux is NOT Windows, and in MANY aspects, we Linux users are thankful for that. But, it also means that it's typically not a trivial task to hang on to and use those software titles that we came to love along our journey, if we can even get them to run at all.
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NovelWriter: Help Writing Your Next Bestseller
According to Synaptic, NovelWriter is "a markdown-like editor for novels". Well, what does this mean?
As the name implies, it's a program intended for writing novels. It has several features to help with that, including an adaption to the markdown syntax to help with getting an overview of the novel. On my computer (a reasonably old one), this application launches instantly and is very responsive.
When we open NovelWriter we are immediately greeted by an "open project" window. It lists the projects we're busy with, which can be opened by double-clicking. There are several other options at the bottom to create a new project, remove a project, and to change the current path.
I chose to create a new project. It asks me several questions about the project and finally asks me whether I would like to have it fill the project. I chose the option which results in an example project.
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Repo Review: Puddletag
If your digital music collection is similar to mine, the music files are haphazardly tagged with various degrees of completeness. Some files may lack informative names and cover art; others may have misspelled track titles or incorrect genres. To better organize your collection, specialized audio tag editors allow you to add and/or edit metadata. Metadata lets information about the audio file -- such as Title, Artist, Composer, Album, Genre, Year -- be stored in the audio file itself. (These core tags are popularly known as ID3 tags).
Puddletag is a simple yet powerful, Qt-based music tag editor that uses Python 3 and PyQt5 (for the GUI). Under the hood, the application uses Mutagen, a Python module which handles audio metadata. Puddletag is an alternative to EasyTag, the oldest and perhaps most commonly used tag editor.
Puddletag is a mature project with a fourteen-year track record. It was first released in July 2008. The original developer, known by the Internet moniker concentricpuddle, is now assisted by a group of developers which includes Sandro Tosi (a computer scientist from Italy) and Corubba (Germany). The program has been translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Czech, Swedish and Russian. The version in the official PCLinuxOS repository is 1.2.0 (released in November 2016).
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Repo Review: Thorium Reader
Thorium Reader is a free Electron-based ebook reader designed with accessibility and ease of use in mind. With support for both EPUB 2 and EPUB 3, PDF, DAISY, LCP DRM, and numerous other ebook as well as audiobook formats, Thorium Reader should be able to open most books without a problem.
Thorium Reader provides a very uncluttered interface, making it quick and easy to navigate. The application is divided into three tabs allowing access to the main books page, OPDS catalogs, and the application settings. From the My Books page, you can open and manage all your ebooks, which can easily be imported into Thorium Reader by simply dragging and dropping them into the application. Books are automatically sorted into separate categories for those that were recently added, and those that you've already started reading. You can also add custom tags to books in order to help organize them better. A search bar is also provided to make finding books easier.